Interactive Widget Ideation

The Interactive Widget project is very open-ended: basically we pick one idea that involves some type of human interaction, and encapsulate it into some type of form factor.

I’ve been considering several ideas. The one I’m most interested in is to create some type of “digital pet”, that feels like a living thing but has an extremely minimal form factor. My original idea is kind of like Sphero, which is just a little sphere that could sit on a desk, and it lights up and rolls towards you when your hand is nearby. The idea is to explore “intimacy” with objects that doesn’t naturally connect with the word “intimate” at all.

Another one is about time. It’s inspired by Qlocktwo, which is an alarm clock that displays time with words. My idea, similar to this, also involves displaying time with words, but instead of describing the exact time, it would intentionally only show a time interval we’re in. (Say, instead of saying “7 after 4pm”, the device would say “just past 4 o’clock”). Since we always stress over knowing the exact time, but knowing the time accurately doesn’t make a difference to us, making it imprecise may be more interesting.

The third idea is simpler—think about a cup, when it’s upside-down, we intuitively know that it’s empty, which corresponds to the “off” state in any digital device. Making a light behave similarly would be fun—turning the light upside down would turn it off, and turning it upright would make it light up again.

So… what should I make?